1: Insomnia

I have had sleep problems for the last eight years, and it has gotten worse since then, but I have tried to be the stronger one since I don’t understand the difference between nights and mornings. They are all gloomy and grimy to me. When your sleep is a mess, your mind is foggy, and it seems like life is not real anymore. That feels like grief—once you had something, but you no longer can experience it. A good sleep is the greatest blessing.

With insomnia, first your memory starts to decay, then your health. Lack of sleep has a direct connection to anxiety issues and heart diseases.

Once, I was so sad about what was happening to me that I felt guilty for my being. Society and people—they just understand the norm, and anything outside of the norm, from their viewpoint, is dark and lethal, and it should be erased.

But with all this, when I watched the movie Still Alice, I decided to be myself and not let my personality be defined by my lacks—instead, by my whole being.

I confess, as Elizabeth Bishop once did: “Losing may look like disaster, but it isn’t hard to master.”

2: Elizabeth Bishop – One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.